Being a pantload pays

The Doughy Pantload inks a million dollar book deal for a book based on the idea in this column; a column that, regardless of one's political beliefs, is easily one of the most poorly-written things you will ever see. It is approximately at the level of a high school newspaper, and not a good one. Here are selected highlights:

One of the most important points of this column over the years — other than my belly, my dog, fair Jessica, my need for a raise, the fact that I have the upper-body strength of an eight-year-old girl and the lung capacity of a Polish whoopee cushion — is my aversion to clichéd thinking.

In debates with readers, colleagues, college audiences, et al. the monitor on my internal respect-o-meter flat-lines every time I hear someone say, for instance, "better ten guilty men go free than one innocent man be punished." In order to explain what I'm talking about let me repeat my objection to this phrase.

First, facts and logic: Remember how we all agreed at the beginning of this column that there's undoubtedly an innocent person in prison right now? Well, he's not free. Are you only as free as him?

Take this principle out of the realm of civil rights for a second. Say you're on a plane. Some poor shlub gets yanked from his flight because the airline screwed up. The plane takes off and you make it to Chicago, while the other guy is still trying to work things out at the Southwest counter. If we are only as free as the least free among us, some magical force would have kept you from leaving too. This is no less true if the guy who got yanked off the plane was pulled off because he was unfairly profiled. You're still free to travel.

Just think - hundreds of pages of this shit. He actually writes the phrase "In order to explain what I am talking about, let me..."